For four years, Jessica Stern interviewed extremist members of three religions around the world: Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Traveling extensively -- to refugee camps in Lebanon, to religious schools in Pakistan, to prisons in Amman, Asqelon, andPensacola -- she discovered that the Islamic jihadi in the mountains of Pakistan and the Christian fundamentalist bomber in Oklahoma have much in common.

Stern's extensive interactions with the faces behind the terror provide unprecedented insight into acts of inexplicable horror, and enable her to suggest how terrorism might most effectively be countered. A crucial book on terror, Terror in the Name of God is a brilliant and thought-provoking work

This chapter tells the story of a group of alienated individuals who joined a religious fellowship in rural Arkansas. After the leader received a "revelation" that the Endtimes had begun, the cult began "fusing together in one body" as directed by a prophetess living on the compound. They burned family photographs, sold their wedding rings, pooled their earnings, and destroyed televisions and other "reminders of the outside world's propaganda." They also began stockpiling weapons to prepare for the "enemy's" anticipated invasion. But the Apocalypse -- and the battle between good and evil forces -- failed to materialize on the appointed hour. Each failed prophecy was followed by a revised forecast. Instead of giving in to despair that their dream of the Endtimes might not materialize, cult members' confidence grew stronger. They intensified their military training, acquired more powerful weapons, and purified themselves to prepare to vanquish the forces of evil.

By examining this cult, we learn how leaders develop a story about imminent danger to an "in group," foster group identity, dehumanize the group's purported enemies, and encourage the creation of a "killer self" capable of murdering large numbers of innocent people. This chapter focuses on the evolution of a cult member named Kerry Noble. We observe how the leader cunningly capitalized on Noble's need to feel important inside the group, and how, over time, Noble was transformed from a gentle but frustrated pastor seeking transcendence to a terrorist prepared to countenance "war" against the cult's enemies -- blacks,Jews, "mud people," and the U.S. government.

On April 19, 1985, two hundred federal and state law-enforcement agents staged a siege at a 240-acre armed compound in rural Arkansas inhabited by a Christian cult called the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA). The cult had long been expecting an enemy invasion, and members had laid land mines around the periphery of the property. They had stockpiled five years' worth of food. James Ellison,the commander of the cult, wanted to shoot it out with the feds. Danny Coulson, head of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, eventually persuaded Ellison that the cult would lose such a battle. Coulson said he had a Huey helicopter, just over the hill, which would level the place if a cult member fired a single shot. He also said that an aircraft circling the property was equipped with heatseeking devices. "We can watch your every move, day or night," he said. He told cult members that he had an armored personnel carrier around the bend, and weapons so advanced and new that the military didn't have them yet. "Your organization is considered by the government to be the best-trained civilian paramilitary group in America. That's why we're here. We're only sent against the best," he told the cult's second-in-command, Kerry Noble, who had been sent to negotiate with the enemy.

The FBI asked the Reverend Robert Millar, a leading cleric of the American racist right, to help negotiate with the cult. Millar reports that he saw 150 men in camouflage, plus FBI and ATF agents, a SWAT team, and "a few Mossad agents," scattered in the woods around the compound, whom he blamed for provoking a "tense and dangerous confrontation." "If it comes to a fight, hand me a gun, show me how to use it, and I am with you," he says he told Ellison.